An Easy Approach to Negotiating
How to ask for more without all of the mind-games
I’ve never been comfortable with the idea of “negotiating”. Maybe it’s because I grew up in the 80’s where corporate takeovers were standard issue in movies and TV.
Picture people in power suits, all shoulder pads and hair spray. Corporate espionage, unfair pricing. All very Gordon “greed is good” Gecko.
This did not sit well as I came of age in the 90’s, weened on grunge music, No Logo activism and a general mistrust of the corporate game.
Even though I had a successful TV career, I shied away from salary negotiations for years. As long as I felt I was getting fair pay, I could be happy with the other perks of working in TV.
Then, last year I started my own media consulting business. Suddenly I had to get very comfortable (and very good) at negotiating if I wanted to survive.
Here’s the thing: you can negotiate and get results without manipulating the other party.
Simply put, you can ask for what you want and still feel like a decent human being.
Have a Value System and Stick to It
In general I like to give people the benefit of the doubt. I will trust you until you give me reason not to. The journalist in me will do some healthy vetting and will question what needs to be questioned. But when it comes to negotiating, I don’t come to the table expecting to be screwed.
Most old-school negotiating advice does have that approach. Many will tell you to not make the first offer. The idea being most people will undersell themselves in a negotiation.
Here’s the workaround: do your research. Figure out what the fair market value is for your services. And be honest with yourself. Have you honed these skills for more than a decade in the industry? Or are you starting out? Is the industry saturated with people with your skillset? Or are you offering a specialized product?
A new school of thought is to be the person who makes the first move. The first dollar amount will determine the direction of the negotiations. If you make the first offer, you’re in control of the negotiations.
This approach makes sense to me. It’s how real estate works. When you list a property, you take a look at the comps in your area. Then you take a look at your property to see if it’s on par with what’s selling at a certain level. If it’s dated, you lower the price. If it’s a rare find on the market at that point in time, you can list higher and still attract buyers.
The same goes for salary negotiations. In either scenario you need to go into that space knowing what a good deal is for you. Whether you speak first or second, you need to know your market value to know if you have a good offer.
“Anything Else?”
Back in the 1990’s my father found himself in a similar situation I was in last year: laid off from a comfortable corporate job and looking for work mid-career.
Recently he told me the story of his first high-yield salary negotiation.
At the time he was interested in computer software and taught himself SAP. He liked the program and could see its value in business. By the time he was transitioning his career, he was one of only a handful of SAP consultants in the world.
He was approached by IBM, which offered him a full-time position. It was a lateral move as an SAP expert from one company to the next, so naturally they offered him the same salary as what the previous company paid him.
“Anything else?” was my father’s reply.
The hiring manager followed with full medical benefits at $30/month.
“Anything else?”
They threw in a two-tiered bonus structure: one for my dad’s team and one for himself. Some years, he doubled his salary with these combined bonuses.
“Anything else?”
The hiring manager was flustered. Who was this ingrate who wasn’t satisfied with a job offer this sweet?
An ingrate who knew just how specialized his skillset was and wanted to see how much this company understood the value in that.
They threw in stock options.
I’m sure my father could have “Anything Else’d” his way to even more perks, but decided to stop there.
The beauty of this approach (at least to me) is it has the tone of a fact-finding mission. Every company has a long menu of benefits and perks to add value to a salary. You can ask for these yourself, or simply ask if there’s anything else they can offer to get you to commit.
There’s nothing aggressive or “schemey” about it. And it seems too polite to be taking from the “Art of War”. Call it a purely Canadian approach to negotiating. You can get a lot by asking questions, as opposed to stating demands.
